The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.: A Novel

Summary

The national bestseller, named a best book of the year by The New Yorker, NPR, Slate, The Economist, The New Republic, Bookforum, Baltimore City Paper, The Daily Beast, National Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Reader,Cosmopolitan, Elle, Buzzfeed and many others. A New York Times Editors' Choice and a Washington Post Notable book."Adelle Waldman's debut novel, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., scrutinizes Nate and the subculture that he thrives in with a patient, anthropological detachment. Ms. Waldman has sorted and cross-categorized the inhabitants of Nate's world with a witty, often breathtaking precision..."—Maria Russo, The New York Times"Adelle Waldman just may be this generation's Jane Austen"—The Boston GlobeA debut novel by a brilliant young woman about the romantic life of a brilliant young man.

Writer Nate Piven's star is rising. After several lean and striving years, he has his pick of both magazine assignments and women: Juliet, the hotshot business reporter; Elisa, his gorgeous ex-girlfriend, now friend; and Hannah, "almost universally regarded as nice and smart, or smart and nice," who holds her own in conversation with his friends. When one relationship grows more serious, Nate is forced to consider what it is he really wants.In Nate's 21st-century literary world, wit and conversation are not at all dead. Is romance? Novelist Adelle Waldman plunges into the psyche of a flawed, sometimes infuriating modern man—one who thinks of himself as beyond superficial judgment, yet constantly struggles with his own status anxiety, who is drawn to women, yet has a habit of letting them down in ways that may just make him an emblem of our times. With tough-minded intelligence and wry good humor The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. is an absorbing tale of one young man's search for happiness—and an inside look at how he really thinks about women, sex and love.

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The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. - Adelle Waldman

Copyright

1

It was too late to pretend he hadn’t seen her. Juliet was already squinting with recognition. For an instant she looked pleased to make out a familiar face on a crowded street. Then she realized who it was.

Nate.

"Juliet! Hi. How are you?"

At the sound of his voice, a tight little grimace passed over Juliet’s eyes and mouth. Nate smiled uneasily.

She crossed her arms in front of her and began gazing meditatively at a point just above and to the left of his forehead. Her dark hair was loose, and she wore a belted blue dress and a black blazer whose sleeves were bunched up near her elbows. Nate glanced from Juliet to a cluster of passersby and back to Juliet.

Are you headed to the train? he asked, pointing with his chin to the subway entrance on the corner.

"Really? Juliet’s voice became throaty and animated. Really, Nate? That’s all you have to say to me?"

Jesus, Juliet! Nate took a small step back. I just thought you might be in a hurry.

In fact, he was worried about the time. He was already late to Elisa’s dinner party. He touched a hand to his hair—it always reassured him a little, the thick abundance of his hair.

Come on, Juliet, he said. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Oh? Juliet’s posture grew rigid. How should it be, Nate?

Juliet— he began. She cut him off.

You could have at least— She shook her head. Oh, never mind. It’s not worth it.

Could have at least what? Nate wanted to know. But he pictured Elisa’s wounded, withering look if he showed up so late that all her guests had to wait on him to start dinner, heard her slightly nasal voice brushing off his apology with a whatever, as if she had long since ceased to be surprised by any new bad thing he did.

Look, Juliet, it was great to see you. And you do look great. But I’ve really got to go.

Juliet’s head jerked back. She seemed almost to wince. Nate could see—it was obvious—that she took his words as a rejection. Immediately, he was sorry. He saw her suddenly not as an adversary but as a vulnerable, unhappy young—youngish—woman. He wanted to do something for her, say something earnest and truthful and kind.

You’re an asshole, she said before he had the chance.

She looked at him for a fraction of a second and then turned away, began walking quickly toward the river and the adjacent strip of restaurants and bars. Nate nearly called after her. He wanted to try, at least, to put things on a better footing. But what would he say? And there was no time.

Juliet’s strides, as she receded into the distance, were long and determined, but she moved stiffly, like a person determined not to let on that her shoes hurt her feet. Reluctantly, Nate started walking in the opposite direction. In the deepening twilight, the packed street no longer seemed festive but seedy and carnival-like. He got stuck behind a trio of young women with sunglasses pushed up on their heads and purses flapping against their hips. As he maneuvered around them, the one closest twisted her wavy blonde hair around her neck and spoke to her companions in a Queen Bee–ish twang. Her glance flickered in his direction. Nate didn’t know if the disdain on her face was real or imagined. He felt conspicuous, as if Juliet’s insult had marked him.

After a few blocks, the sidewalks became less congested. Nate began moving faster. And he began to feel irritated with himself for being so rattled. So Juliet didn’t like him. So what? It wasn’t as if she were being fair.

Could have at least what? He had only been out with her three or four times when it happened. It was no one’s fault. As soon as he realized the condom had broken, he’d pulled out. Not quite in time, it turned out. He knew that because he was not the kind of guy who disappeared after sleeping with a woman—and certainly not after the condom broke. On the contrary: Nathaniel Piven was a product of a postfeminist, 1980s childhood and politically correct, 1990s college education. He had learned all about male privilege. Moreover he was in possession of a functional and frankly rather clamorous conscience.

Consider, though, what it had been for him. (Walking briskly now, Nate imagined he was defending himself before an audience.) The party line—he told his listeners—is that she, as the woman, had the worst of it. And she did, of course. But it wasn’t a cakewalk for him, either. There he was, thirty years old, his career finally taking off—an outcome that had not seemed at all inevitable, or even particularly likely, in his twenties—when suddenly there erupted the question of whether he would become a father, which would obviously change everything. Yet it was not in his hands. It was in the hands of a person he barely knew, a woman whom, yes, he’d slept with, but who was by no means his girlfriend. He felt like he had woken up in one of those after-school specials he watched as a kid on Thursday afternoons, whose moral was not to have sex with a girl unless you were ready to raise a child with her. This had always seemed like bullshit. What self-respecting middle-class teenage girl—soon-to-be college student, future affluent young professional, a person who could go on to do anything at all (run a multinational corporation, win a Nobel Prize, get elected first woman president)—what such young woman would decide to have a baby and thus become, in the vacuous, public service announcement jargon of the day, a statistic?

When Juliet broke the news, Nate realized how much had changed in the years since he’d hashed this out. An already affluent, thirty-four-year-old professional like Juliet might view her situation differently than a teenager with nothing before her but possibility. Maybe she was no longer so optimistic about what fate held in store for her (first woman president, for example, probably seemed unlikely). Maybe she had become pessimistic about men and dating. She might view this as her last chance to become a mother.

Nate’s future hinged on Juliet’s decision, and yet not only was it not his to make, he couldn’t even seem to be unduly influencing her. Talking to Juliet, sitting on the blue-and-white-striped sofa in her living room with a cup of tea—tea!—in his hand, discussing the situation, it seemed he’d be branded a monster if he so much as implied that his preference was to abort the baby or fetus or whatever you wanted to call it. (Nate was all for a woman’s right to choose and all the lingo that went with it.) He’d sat there, and he’d said the right things—that it was her decision, that whatever she wanted he’d support, et cetera, et cetera. But who could blame him if he felt only relief when she said—in her I’m a smart-ass, brook-no-bullshit newspaper reporter tone of voice—that, obviously, abortion was the natural solution? Even then he didn’t allow himself to show any emotion. He spoke in a deliberate and measured tone. He said that she should think hard about it. Who could blame him for any of it?

Well, she could. Obviously, she did.

A livery cab idled past, its driver eying Nate to see if he was a potential fare. Nate waved the car on.

As he crossed an empty street, he began to feel certain that what Juliet actually blamed him for was that his reaction, however decent, had made abundantly clear that he didn’t want to be her boyfriend, let alone the father of her child. The whole thing was so personal. You were deciding whether you wanted to say yes to this potential person, literally a commingling of your two selves, or stamp out all trace of its existence. Of course it made you think about how different it would be if the circumstances were different—especially, he imagined, if you were a woman and on some level you wanted a baby. Sitting in Juliet’s living room, Nate had been surprised by just how awful he felt, how sad, how disgusted by the weak, wanton libidinousness (as it seemed to him then) that had brought him to this uncomfortable, dissembling place.

But did any of it make him an asshole? He had never promised her anything. He’d met her at a party, found her attractive, liked her enough to want to get to know her better. He’d been careful not to imply more than that. He’d told her that he wasn’t looking for anything serious, that he was focused on his career. She’d nodded, agreed. Yet he felt sure the whole thing would have played out differently if he could have said to her, Look, Juliet, let’s not have this baby, but maybe some other, at some future point … But while he admired Juliet’s sleek, no-nonsense demeanor, that brisk, confident air, he admired it with dispassionate fascination, as a fine example of type, rather than with warmth. In truth he found her a bit dull.

Nevertheless, he had done everything that could have been expected of him. Even though he had less money than she did, he paid for the abortion. He went with her to the clinic and waited while it was being performed, sitting on a stain-resistant, dormitory lounge–style couch with a rotating cast of teenage girls who typed frenetically on their cell phones’ tiny keyboards. When it was over, he took her home in a taxi. They spent a pleasant, strangely companionable day together, at her place, watching movies and drinking wine. He left the apartment only to pick up her prescription and bring her a few groceries. When, finally, around nine, he got up to go home, she followed him to the door.

She looked at him intently. Today was … well, it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

He, too, felt particularly tender at that moment. He brushed some hair from her cheek with his thumb and let it linger for a moment. I’m really sorry for what you had to go through, he said.

A few days later, he called to see how she was feeling.

A little sore, but okay, she said.

He said he was glad to hear it. There was a long pause. Nate knew he should say something chatty and diverting. He opened his mouth to speak. But a panicky premonition came over him: this phone call would lead to an endless string of others, the day at Juliet’s apartment to a regular movie date, all tinged with a sense of obligation and an almost creepy quasi flirtation.

I’ve got to run, he said. I’m glad you’re feeling better.

Oh. Juliet drew in her breath. Okay … Bye, then.

He probably should have followed up after that. As he turned the corner onto Elisa’s street, Nate conceded that he should have called or e-mailed a few weeks later. But, at the time, he hadn’t known if a call from him would have been welcome. It might have been a painful reminder of something she would rather put behind her. Nor did he know what he would have said. And he’d gotten distracted, caught up in other things—in life. She could have called him.

He’d done more than many guys would have. Was it his fault if he just didn’t feel that way about her? Could have at least what?

The front door of Elisa’s building was propped open with a large rock. Light from the hallway made a yellow arc on the concrete stoop. Nate paused before entering, taking a breath and running a hand through his hair. Inside, the stairs sagged and groaned under his feet. Elisa’s landing smelled of sautéed onions. After a moment, the door swung open.

Natty! she cried, throwing her arms around him.

* * *

Though he and Elisa had broken up more than a year ago, her apartment, on the top floor of a row house in gentrifying Greenpoint, still felt almost as familiar to Nate as his own.

Before she moved in, its brick walls had been plastered over and covered with floral wallpaper. The thick, irregular beams of the wood floor were hidden under carpet. Elisa’s landlord, Joe Jr., once showed Nate and Elisa photos. After more than twenty years, its elderly Polish occupant had left to live with a daughter in New Jersey. Joe Jr. had torn up the carpet and ripped the plaster off the exterior walls. His father, who had bought the house in the 1940s and had since moved to Florida, said he was crazy. Joe Sr. thought adding a dishwasher or replacing the old bathtub would have been a better investment. But I told him that that wasn’t the way to attract high-class tenants, Joe Jr. explained to Nate and Elisa one afternoon, while he repaired some tiles in the bathroom. I told him the kind of people who pay the big bucks go wild for clawfoot tubs. It’s a matter of taste, I told him. Joe Jr. turned to face them, a jar of spackle dangling from his fleshy fingers. And was I right or was I right? he asked jovially, a big grin lighting up his face. Nate and Elisa, holding hands, nodded uneasily, unsure of the appropriate response to being so openly—and aptly—characterized as a certain kind of dupe.

Nate had helped Elisa paint the two nonbrick walls a beige that contrasted with the dark brick and the cream-colored rug under her couch. The dining room table they had purchased together at Ikea, but the chairs and a long cabinet by the door had belonged to her grandparents. (Or was it her great-grandparents?) Her bookcases reached nearly to the ceiling.

The apartment’s familiarity now felt to him like a reproach. Elisa had insisted on his presence tonight. If we really are friends, why can’t I have you over for dinner with a few people? she’d asked. What could he say?

On the couch, Nate’s friend Jason, a magazine editor who, to Nate’s alternating irritation and amusement, had long wanted to get into Elisa’s pants, leaned back regally, cradling the back of his head in his palms. Jason’s knees were stretched absurdly far apart, as if he were trying to bore the largest possible impression of himself into Elisa’s furniture. Next to Jason sat Aurit, another good friend of Nate’s, who had recently returned from a research trip to Europe. Aurit was talking to a girl named Hannah, whom Nate had met before here and there—a thin, pert-breasted writer, pleasant-looking in spite of rather angular features. She was almost universally regarded as nice and smart, or smart and nice. Seated on the loveseat was a woman Elisa knew from college. Nate couldn’t remember her name and had met her too many times to ask. He knew she was a lawyer. The weak-chinned suit with his arm draped over her shoulder was, presumably, the banker she was hot to marry.

We’ve been wondering when you were going to grace us with your company, Jason said as soon as Nate had both feet in the door.

Nate set his messenger bag on the floor. I ran into some trouble on the way.

The G? Aurit asked sympathetically.

There followed murmurs of agreement that the G, among all the New York subway lines, was especially unreliable.

Nate took the only available seat, next to Elisa’s college friend. It’s good to see you, he said, with as much warmth as he could conjure. It’s been a while.

She looked at him levelly. You and Elisa were still going out.

Nate thought he detected an accusation in her voice—as in it was before you trampled all over her self-esteem and ruined her happiness.

He forced himself to hold his smile. In any case, it’s been too long.

Nate introduced himself to her banker boyfriend and tried to get the guy talking. If he’d just refer to her by name, Nate would at least be relieved of one anxiety. But the ex-frat boy mostly let her answer for him (equity research, Bank of America, former Merrill Lynch, transition stressful). His preferred means of communication appeared to be nonverbal: a fixed smile and benign, fatherly nods of his head.

Soon—though not necessarily soon enough—Elisa beckoned them to a table crowded with platters and bowls.

Everything looks delicious, someone said, as they circled the table, smiling beatifically at the spread and at each other. Elisa returned from the other side of the room, carrying a butter dish. Frowning, she scanned the room one last time. A self-satisfied sigh escaped her mouth as she sank gracefully into her seat, the billowy yellow fabric of her skirt fluttering on her descent.

Go ahead and start, she said, without making any move to start herself. The chicken will get cold.

While he ate his chicken cacciatore—which, as it happened, was quite good—Nate studied Elisa’s heart-shaped face: those big, limpid eyes and dramatic cheekbones, the pretty, bow-shaped lips and profusion of white teeth. Each time Nate saw her, Elisa’s beauty struck him anew, as if in the interval the memory of what she actually looked like had been distorted by the tortured emotions she elicited since they’d broken up: in his mind, she took on the dimensions of an abject creature. What a shock when she opened the door, bursting with vibrant, almost aggressive good health. The power of her beauty, Nate had once decided, came from its ability to constantly reconfigure itself. When he thought he’d accounted for it, filed it away as a dead fact—pretty girl—she turned her head or bit her lip, and like a children’s toy you shake to reset, her prettiness changed shape, its coordinates altered: now it flashed from the elegant contours of her sloping brow and flaring cheekbone, now from her shyly smiling lips. Elisa the Beautiful, Nate had said without thinking when she hugged him at the door. She’d beamed, breezily overlooking his lateness.

Yet only a short while later, he’d acclimated. Hannah had complimented her apartment. I hate it, Elisa responded. "It’s small, and it’s laid out poorly. The fixtures are incredibly cheap. Then a quick smile: Thank you, though."

The familiar hint of whine in Elisa’s voice brought back to Nate an equally familiar cocktail of guilt and pity and dread. Also sheer annoyance—that spoiled, ill-tempered quality about her. Her prettiness became an irritant, a Calypso-like lure to entrap him, again.

Besides, as he poked at his chicken with his fork, Nate noticed the pores on Elisa’s nose and a bit of acne atop her forehead, near her hairline, flaws so minor that it would be ungentlemanly to notice them on most women. But on Elisa, whose prettiness seemed to demand that she be judged on some Olympian scale of perfect beauty, these imperfections seemed, irrationally, like failures of will or judgment on her part.

What are you working on these days? she asked him as a bowl of potatoes was passed around for the second time.

Nate dabbed his mouth with a napkin. Just an essay.

Elisa’s round eyes and cocked head implored him to elaborate.

It’s about how one of the privileges of being elite is that we outsource the act of exploitation, he said, glancing at Jason, seated diagonally from him.

The idea for this essay was a bit hazy, and Nate dreaded sounding naive, like the person he’d been in his early twenties, before he’d learned that writing ambitiously, about big or serious subjects, was a privilege magazines granted only to people who’d already made it. But he had recently written a book. He had received a significant advance for it, and even though publication was still many months away, the book had already generated quite a bit of publicity. If he hadn’t yet made it, he was getting closer.

We get other people to do things that we’re too morally thin-skinned to do ourselves, he said with more conviction. Conscience is the ultimate luxury.

You mean that it’s almost entirely working-class people who join the army and that sort of thing? Jason said loudly enough that all other conversation ceased. He reached for a slice of baguette from a butcher block. Can you pass the butter? he asked Hannah, before turning back to Nate expectantly.

Jason’s curls were tamped down with a glistening ointment. He had the aspect of a diabolical cherub.

That’s not exactly what I had in mind, Nate said. I mean—

I think you’re absolutely right, Nate, Aurit broke in, wielding her fork like a pointer. I think Americans in general are too removed from all the ugliness that goes into safeguarding so-called normal life.

"It is offensive, Nate agreed. But I’m actually not so much interested in security issues as day-to-day life, the ways we protect ourselves from feeling complicit in the economic exploitation that goes on all around us. Take Whole Foods. Half of what you pay for when you shop there is the privilege of feeling ethically pure. He set his wine glass on the table and began gesturing with his arms. Or consider the Mexican guy the landlord pays to put the trash in front of our buildings twice a week. We wouldn’t exploit him ourselves, but on some level we know the guy is an illegal immigrant who doesn’t even get minimum wage."

Joe Jr. does the trash himself, Elisa said. But he’s really cheap.

Is there a difference between being ‘racialist’ and ‘racist’? Elisa’s college friend asked.

Same with the guys who deliver our pizza and make our sandwiches, Nate continued. He knew that he was violating an implicit rule of dinner party etiquette. Conversation was supposed to be ornamental, aimed to amuse. One wasn’t supposed to be invested in the content of what was said, only the tone. But for the moment he didn’t care. We don’t exploit them ourselves, he said. No, we hire someone, a middleman, usually a small business owner, to do it, so we don’t have to feel bad. But we still take advantage of their cheap labor, even as we prattle on about our liberalism—how great the New Deal was, the eight-hour workday, the minimum wage. Our only complaint—in theory—is that it didn’t go far enough.

Excuse me, Nate. Aurit held up an empty wine bottle. Should we open another?

Joe does hire Mexicans to renovate, Elisa said in a tipsily thoughtful voice as she walked to the cabinet by the door. Atop it stood several wine bottles whose necks poked out of colorful plastic bags. They had of course been brought by the other guests. Nate recognized the lime-green packaging of the Tangled Vine, his own neighborhood wine store. This seemed to make his failure worse. He had meant to pick up a bottle on the way over.

Elisa selected a red and returned to her seat. Can someone open it? she asked before turning to Nate. Sorry, Nate. Go on.

Nate had lost the thread of his argument.

Hannah took the bottle from Elisa. You were saying that we benefit from exploitation but pretend our hands are clean, she said helpfully as Elisa handed her a tarnished copper corkscrew that looked old enough to have accompanied Lewis and Clark on their westward journey. One of Elisa’s heirlooms, no doubt. I think— Hannah started to

Reviews

A very disappointing read. I can't believe how good the reviews have been. It reads like a male version of Sex in the City only without the humour and with much less interesting characters. Being so rigidly stuck in the world of publishing, the novel is an exercise in navel-gazing. The main character is irritating self-centred and boring which may be what the author intended but, if so, does not make for an interesting novel.

At first glance, this novel comes off as incredibly pretentious and full of itself. That is, Nate, the main character (though it is questionable whether he is actually intended to be a protagonist, or rather antagonist to the many girls in his life), thinks multi-syllable words are the only words worth using. But the novel is written in train-of-thought style, and eventually Nate, as a character on a page, is developed - at least within the parameters of his internal dialogue. He slowly transforms from the haughty, self-aggrandizing, immature boy he appears to be from page one, into a slightly less haughty, still self-aggrandizing, slightly more mature man, as his apparent nature is revealed to be a cover-up for his insecurities and general sense of failure. At least that’s what Nate would have you believe.The true feat of artistry and creativity is Waldman’s attempt at writing the male perspective. And while the attempt deserves an applause, it merits questioning whether this male character seems as well-rounded from a male POV as it did (to me) from a female POV. Is Nate overly concerned with emotions? Does he encapsulate all the hedonistic qualities of a man as only a woman would portray him? In the end, Nate reminded me of Dog from the Pixar movie Up (and boy do I wish I had a better comparison). He seems unexpectedly intelligent, so for a while it is possible to forget WHAT he is, in favor of how impressive he seems. But in the end, just as Dog could no longer deny his canine nature when he smelled a squirrel, no more could Nate ignore his sexuality in the presence of an attractive female. Written in a thoughtful, true-to-life feat of incredible creativity, the end result of The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. is the inevitability of succumbing to one’s nature in spite of any and all effort to the contrary.

"Men and women on relationships are like men and women on orgasms, except in reverse.... Women crave relationships the way men crave orgasm. Their whole being bends to its imperative. Men, in contrast, want relationships the way women want orgasm: sometimes, under the right circumstances."I'm in a strange place with reviewing this one, for a couple of reasons. The first is because I was asked to include it in Austen in August, even though it is not really a retelling of any of Austen's works, or even a nod to them. And yet, it also is? More on that later. The other reason is that, it's hard to recommend a book that's all about unlikability... What do you say? "You should read this, you'll have everyone?" Bit of a hard sell, that. So let's try the soft sell: Adelle Waldman's debut is an incisive look dating, social mores and general douchebaggery.Okay, I don't know if that made it sound any better.The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., for me, is not necessarily something to be liked, but something to be appreciated. No, Nate isn't likable, but does he need to be? Plenty of the most memorable characters in literature are not the least bit likable - but they are fascinating. Is Nate Piven fascinating, then? As a prime example of his "type," sure. He's a dick. But he thinks he's very earnest, he thinks he's very evolved. He pats himself on the back a lot, and makes you want to shake him a little harder each time. But at the same time, you know he's very intelligent, you know he's ambitious and talented. You know he's capable of being charming... maybe he's a sociopath? No, he's too neurotic and guilt-ridden for that, but he has a sociopath's skill-set, to be sure. He coolly appraises each woman he comes into contact with, dismissing them as viable bedmates like a medieval king surveying the the peasants for much the same reason. When Nate does encounter someone he finds suitable - not just attractive, but suitable, momentarily fascinating - he turns on the charm and lures them in, and I'm not even sure he realizes what he's doing.There are moments when he's assessing what went wrong with a relationship, and he'll compare himself to his male friends and how much worse they are, how much more crass - but he never seems to realize that he does the same, only with less honesty. Nate's got a wandering eye, and the minute it starts to twitch and want to wander, he begins to discover all the many, many flaws each of his girlfriends apparently has. All the reasons they can't make it work, so he shouldn't even bother - and though he sometimes admits that it's probably him, he'll admit in the same breath a thousand excuses... One of my favorite parts of the book is when a character called him on it, because it's what I'd been wanting to say the entire time: "I feel like you want to think what you're feeling is really deep, like some seriously profound existential shit. But to me, it looks like the most tired, the most average thing in the world, the guy who is all interested in a woman until the very moment when it dawns on him that he has her. Wanting only what you can't have. The affliction of shallow morons everywhere."So, if you look for characters you can connect with and root for, Nathaniel P. is probably not your guy. In fact, most of the characters are not all that likable and rootforable. (Except maybe Aurit.) But the way in which this is executed, the ease with which Waldman brings these characters - who never feel like caricatures - to life, is what makes you keep coming back for more. Like Nate, Waldman charms you, she makes you smile, she makes you want to give him a try, give him a second chance. Even when I was hating on Nate (or, not even hating, but being frustrated by Nate, who could be better than this), I was drawn along by Waldman's style and insight. The characters are very real, we know these people, but at the same time, they're just heightened-enough to bring out what Waldman (or Nate) is trying to show us. And this is where Jane Austen comes in, because I can see why this trait, this ability to capture a character on such an honest level, is drawing comparisons to Austen. (And of course, the focus on dating and relationships, though as a Janeite, it just draws it more into focus how times have changed...) Nathaniel P. is a very good character study, and it does have some of that wry, reserved presentation we associate with Austen: we see right through Nathaniel, we understand him while he tries very hard to pretend to understand himself.Whether this is a book to put on your to-get list is going to depend entirely on what it is you want to get from a story, and how high a tolerance you have for smug, womanizing assholes who always manage to land on their feet and excuse away their failings... So I'll leave that to you to decide.

Nate Piven is an up and comer in the world of publishing. He is a more evolved male who doesn't want to hurt women but somehow ends up being a disappointment when it comes to dating and relationships.At first it was fun being in Nate's head and looking at things from his point of view, especially women and some of the more subtle, manipulative things our gender has been known to do. The 'Let's stay friends but when we spend time together I want to continue hashing out what what wrong with our relationship' gambit. Nate has his own inadequacies of which he is aware and tends to focus on too much. He starts dating Hannah and just wants to keep it casual but they end up in a relationship. At more than halfway through the book, I started to get tired of being in Nate's head and found him too whiny and over-analytical. I know that was point but it just got dull and I gave up. I skipped through to the ending and honestly, I don't think I missed much. Save your money, if you are still interested, go to the library.

So the good folks at Henry Holt and Co. are pushing The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. as a book with “the most (frighteningly) realistic male character of 2013” at its center. It's a marketing move, I get that; I'm not knocking the wise choice of catering to machismo men and jilted women with the same book. Such a move can, however, make way for giving the Man-Hater's camp some fodder, so let me step up on my soapbox here for all to see and say “yes, Nathaniel Piven is certainly one very accurate sampling of a male character, but by no means does he embody the definition of male personality. Thank you.”Nathaniel Piven is sort of a jerk, but I think that's giving him too much credit. I think I was supposed to walk away hating Nate more than I did, because, let's be “realistic” here, the girls climbing all over Nate weren't exactly not asking to have their hearts trampled on. Yes, Hannah was quite likable and I did feel bad for her, but it's almost as if she thought if she threw herself at Nate, he'd respect and love her. Ladies, sex does not equal love. Respect rarely comes from having sex with someone on a first (or second) date. But, I forget, I stepped off my soapbox in the first paragraph.So, all that being said, the characters were very well written because Adelle Waldman really got into Nate's psyche. And she did a fabulous job of showing the other characters' sardonic perceptions through Nate's eyes. Nate suffers from a mental illness of some kind, but it is never presented as such; rather, his illness is seen as more of a gender issue. Clearly, the author wants you to believe that being a man is a mental... wait, no—forgot I wasn't going there again.Okay, the book. So I liked the book (despite my aforementioned peeve), but my ability to enjoy it may have had something to do with the fact the whole thing felt more like satire, commenting on the publishing industry and the lives of the literati. And if that's the case, maybe Waldman isn't poking at me as a man, but at the industry in general. If so, I say game on; we all know everything we've ever heard about the unlikable chums in that group is true.I can't help but wonder if I've just somehow proven that I, too, am like Nathaniel P.

It is not unimportant that Nate Piven's ideal evening is one spent eating a freezer pizza "for one" while reading Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time. Nate in many ways resembles Lermontov's anti-hero, the cynical, self-absorbed, boredom-prone, nihilistic but ultimately sensitive, Pechorin. Well, Nate is Pechorin without the balls to be an thorough-going cad. Despite his flaws, and Pechorin is deeply flawed, he is one of my favorite characters. Nate has much of his charm. He knows that he is considered a " nice guy," and the shtick works for him, yet he clearly knows he is a bit if a cad. His recent writing success, his Harvard education, his feeling of being in a higher intellectual sphere than he actually is haven't done much to dampen is self- important social imaging. Yet on his own he is really just another lonely " superfluous man" whining in the dark. He likes the amenities of a relationship, but the hard work, the accommodations, the lack of a separate life, the sacrifice, these he can't man up to. Even with a woman who really demands nothing of him, he feels the burden of sacrifice. His vacillations and unrelenting self analysis are heartbreaking. I wanted to reach through the pages and wring his little neck. Tell him to stop being such a yutz. Whining, petulant...the list could go on and on. So why is Nate so likeable. Quite simply, he is honest and he is real. In fact all of the characters are beautifully developed. I was expecting a bunch of latter day Seinfeld like caricatures, yet that is not what Waldman delivered. Beyond the characters, the book is elegantly written comedy of manners in the 21st century. At times Waldman verges on a satiric tone, but ultimately her big-heartedness out. If as a reader you know that unrelenting self analysis is tedious, if A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man wore you out, this may not be the book for you. Hopefully by the time the book is released the, at this point, egregious job with the editing will be worked out. Many, many errors.

Nathaniel "Nate" Piven is an up and coming literary phenom living in New York City. He continues to pay his dues as a scrub writer - essays, book reviews, magazine articles. His first novel is coming out soon and this reader looked forward to exactly what he would do as he relishes in what may be his last moments of anonymity. However, Ms. Waldman takes the reader on the path suggested by the title. She relates stories of his relationships, past and present, both with women and men. On the first page, we meet Juliet, a former short term relationship that ended with an abortion and no calls after taking care of her after the procedure. This is supposed to establish that Nate is a ladies' man, love-em-and-leave-em type. Ms. Waldman then spends the majority of the novel on Nate's relationship with Hannah. Not his first serious relationship, but could it be his most lasting? His eye wanders to other women. He self-analyzes to try to figure out why he is the way he is.With insights into his day to day life trying to make ends meet and struggling to write for a living, much of the novel allows for a glimpse into this world of young literary twenty- and thirty-somethings. These people have intelligent conversations at dinner parties before getting drunk and falling into the closest bed with the closest person. Some very good, descriptive writing is on display. One example is Nate's description of his bedroom in his bachelor's apartment: "He was distracted by an ominous crack in his wall, inching downward from the molding above his bed. Arrow-shaped, it seemed to point accusingly at the squalor below."This reader found the literary-world portions of the book much more interesting than the relationships. The ending chapters touch on the "rebound relationship" that may have been more interesting to relate in detail than the one with Hannah.While understanding that this is an advance copy, the lack of editing as the novel went on became very distracting. There were missing words, doubled words, incomplete sentences, missing punctuation and typographical errors.Overall rating is straight down the middle. Not overwhelmed, but did find some interesting stories within the main story.

This was... a trial. Nathaniel (Nate) was tiresome and pretentious, and showed little depth of character. He seemed to be a liberal intellectual with a heavy dose of misogynist tendencies, all of which were somehow justified by his literary prowess. His lack of interest in anyone else in the book, including those with whom he was ostensibly forming relationships, was off-putting as well. By the time the novel finished, one might expect the main character to grow and develop as a result of his experiences, but Nate did not appear to do so. Nor did there seem to be any centrally occurring conflict to spur the story onward, keeping the reader interested in Nate's exploits. Ultimately, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P reads a lot more like a stream of consciousness as written by Nate (though oddly in the third person rather than the first) rather than a cohesive novel.

I thought I was really going to like this book because the summaries and advanced praise made it sound like a novel I would enjoy but after I finished I was relieved it was over. Perhaps that was what the author Adelle Waldman (not to be confused with Ayelet Waldman) was aiming for as she dragged us along for Nathaniel Piven's relationships: past, present, unrequited crushes, and every girl he happened to spy wearing tight jeans that he might want to have a tryst with should the situation present itself. Nathan's affairs are not what bogged the book down though it's all the "smart" conversations Nathan and his equally literary and educated friends have at parties and restaurants.The setting and the subjects: big city, literary circles, struggling writers, domesticity, love lives, and relationships reminded me of George Gissing's New Grub Street a novel from way back (1891) that explores the same topics. That novel influenced the newer Grub by Elise Blackwell (2007). I recommend reading either or both of those novels and then if you're still longing for more read Waldman's novel. I hope Waldman keeps writing because I'd give her next book a try.

I gave two stars because the writing is for the most part good, but I feel even that is being generous. I cannot quite determine the intended tone of this book. From the blurbs on the back, apparently it is supposed to be funny but it does not come across that way. It could be satire, poking fun of the very literary "scene" (ugh) that makes up its environs, but that doesn't feel quite right either. Perhaps the author once dated a "Nate" and this is her revenge novel? Despite being third person, it is difficult not to think that the main character Nate also wrote the narrative, as pretense and mental masturbation are just as transparent there as in Nate's words and actions. Nate at first seems to be trying, just a little, to be a decent human being but he just can't quite escape his pit of mild misogyny and strong narcissism. Sure, it may be a telling portrait of the youthful excess of literary up-and-comers and their intellectual pretense, but it's not a portrait I'd like to look at and these characters are not people I would like to spend any time with. I finished the book because I wanted to see where it goes, but let me save you the couple of hours and tell you now: it goes nowhere.

Mrs. Waldman painted a picture of the young new York writers dating scene in this book. The main character, Nate, is an up and coming writer who just can't seem to stick with a relationship. He finds a great girl, sleeps with her and dates her for a few months, then starts to find fault with some little thing, whether it be physical or mental and brake up with them. But then he meets Hannah, a friend of a former girlfriend and starts his cycle again. But Hannah id different, he has fun with her and they just get along great. When everything is all and well, old Nate's ways start to creep back on him, and he contemplates breaking it off with her.A very funny book, with very detailed writing of human emotions and thoughts, Mrs. Waldman proves herself to be a rising star.

I will start with the good stuff. Waldman has an engaging writing style. Her prose is both breezy and smart (not the easiest combo.) She knows literary hipster Brooklyn really well and provides a great setting. She also developed one interesting and dimensional character. Sadly that character is not Nate.I think the author set out to write a book in the tradition of authors like Philip Roth and John Updike but with more depth of character. What would it look like if we could see inside of Nathan Zuckerman's or Harry Angstrom's head? Unfortunately I think that was a fool's errand. What is inside of Zuckerman or Angstrom or Nathaniel P. is pretty much what is on the outside of Zukerman or Angstrom or Nathaniel P. I am not saying men are not deep, or that men are all alike. What I am saying is that a certain kind of man, a narcissist who thinks about what image he is projecting rather than being a good man doesn't have the kinds of inner battles that Nate fights in this book. Nate is both jaded and callow. That seems like a paradox, but when you experience a lot and never grow as a person that is what happens. Waldman tries to make Nate complex, but he's a simple man. He cares about his writing, and he cares about how he is perceived, he cares about getting laid, he cares about feeling important without actually doing anything of import. Nate wrestling with himself, as he does for most of this book, is simply untrue to the character. Hannah was kind of great though. I liked Hannah. I want to read her story. I think Waldman would write it very well.

Some other reviewers have given this a low mark because the main character is kind of a unlikeable. Talk about missing the point! This is a forensic dismembering of a certain kind of creative, vaguely feminist, intellectual jerk - and it's note perfect. Brutal, sometimes funny and engagingly written.

The Love Affairs Of Nathaniel P.byAdele WaldmanMy " in a nutshell" summary...Nathaniel P. or Nate...trying to work his way through relationships and life.My thoughts after reading this quirky ( sort of ) book...It's always fun to read a book where the central character is a youngish man trying to figure out his way through life and relationships especially when the book is written by a woman. Plus...Nate is an interesting character. He is not necessarily attractive in my mind but he is appealing. In my head I have him looking like a young Woody Allen. Not necessarily good looking but infinitely appealing. In his own words he was never really that popular in high school...but rather kind of nerdy and wordy...but for some reason women are attracted to him. Who knew?He lives in NYC in a semi dismal apartment...often pondering the fact that his coffee maker is filthy but he doesn't want to do anything about it. He has had a number of relationships...his latest ones with Elissa...and then Hannah...and they are recently broken up. He seems to have tons of reasons to break up with the women in his life. He doesn't seem that honorable. Is he a typical thirty something? He is writing a book, reviewing books and sort of living from check to check but money doesn't seem to be an issue. His issues are all his own. His friends, his likes, his dislikes all seem to make me believe he is not truly emotionally invested in anything. Again...my thoughts...I am probably wrong.I liked this book without really caring for anyone. I felt that Nate lacked true emotions but it really didn't bother him and so it didn't bother me either. Final thoughts...I read this book as though I was reading an article. I was not able to truly connect to it but I don't think it was the fault of the book. The characters were living their lives in the world we live in...just trying to find their way by becoming involved in relationships and friendships. First jobs, budding careers, frustrations...were all there and it was interesting.So...a good book...well written...just not one that pulled me in. This is one of those books that is also hard to review. It's not long but some form of ordinary life is happening on every page...relationships, getting coffee, dinners, talking...constantly talking to friends at parties, meetings, walks, everywhere. That was all interesting and helpful in figuring out Nate but it wasn't necessarily high drama or page turning. Probably more...hmmm...comfy! And very happy not to ever have been involved with him...it would not have been earth shattering...just annoying.

Fantastic writing - such an accurate and ugly depiction of today's ivy league and feminism-wrought adults in the modern dating scene. Nate is a loathsome character; a single New Yorker in his early 30s, neurotic, hyper-critical, petty, jealous, and lacks any sense of selflessness when it comes to relationships, whether romantic or general friendship. Everything I dislike about modern young people's feel-good liberalism is embodied in Nate and his circle of friends' rampant narcissism and hypocrisy. Lord help us if this brand of youth ever becomes the cultural majority.

Adelle Waldman’s debut novel is about a particular type of guy that many women will surely recognize. An overeducated, underemployed manchild who can’t quite seem to grow up even as success is knocking at the door of his squalid walk-up. He’s a serial monogamist stubbornly unable to commit to an adult relationship between equals. Yet, somehow he’s not exactly a bad guy…or anything.If you’re a fan of Sex and the City you may recall that of all the lotharios and ladies-men that Carrie dated, it was the schlubby, self-effacing writer, Berger, who broke up with her in the most humiliating way - on a post-it note. And Nate, Waldman’s protagonist, is cut from precisely the same mold. The story is told through his point of view, so we get a glimpse into his mindset, his history with women and how he perceives his own eligibility [or lack thereof] relative to the other men in his social circle. Believe me, this guy does not see himself as a player by any stretch. Yet somehow, this doesn’t stop him from leaving a string of extremely pissed off , broken-hearted women in his wake.But The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. is actually about more than just one man’s trouble with commitment, and the key can be found in a conversation that takes place early in the book. Nate attends a dinner party with members of the Brooklyn hipster literati hosted by one of his many ex-girlfriends. When asked what he’s currently working on, Nate describes a piece about the American habit of outsourcing cheap labor, which incites a debate about how the liberal elite are willing to pay more at a store like Whole Foods for the privilege of feeling ethically pure. Nate’s thesis is that, "…conscience is the ultimate luxury," and it’s something he certainly affords himself when justifying his treatment of the women in his life. And I think this is the universal theme at the very heart of Waldman’s tale.After all, everyone finds ways of excusing their own bad behavior in order to live with themselves.This is a fast, entertaining read. The writing is sharp and funny. The characters are challenging, hyper-literate and full of barbed wit. If you are a fan of Woody Allen, Whit Stillman, Noah Baumbach or HBO’s comedy, Girls, you’re sure to find something to like in The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.

WOMAN GETS COMPLETELY INSIDE MAN'S HEAD should be the headline proclaiming this as one of the best books ever written about man vs woman. Based on the picture on the back flap, author Adelle Waldman is female, but no woman has ever figured out as much about men in their 30s as she has. It should probably be categorized as nonfiction. Her protagonist, Nate, lays his thoughts bare to the reader, and boy are they shallow. You want to send a sympathy card to ever woman he ever wooed and dumped. Compared to all his Harvard buddies, Nate comes from a relatively humble background, and maybe that's what made him the totally self centered bastard that he is, which makes for some fascinating reading. Nate's not all bad - he's just all bad for women. His inner monologues, as well as Waldman's renditions of his shattered expectations in every love affair, are just fascinating to me. Ever wonder why a man did this, that, or the other thing? Read this excellent book and find out. And weep - with frustration.

As I read this book it became more and more oppressively, claustrophobically, the Brooklyn journalistic/literary scene. While it was amusing at first, it was not nearly amusing enough to sustain even its relatively slender length. And while much of it rang true--and there was something impressive and borderline titillating about a woman inhabiting a man's head to the degree that Adelle Waldman pulled off in this book--that was not enough to transcend what felt like a narrow setting and an all-too-ordinary setting of a 20 something going from affair to affair. If it had more of a plot or a purpose it might have felt different than the exploration of a social setting and the rise and fall of a relationship within that setting. That said, it was well written and I would certainly consider reading Waldman's next book.

I knew this guy. Apparently, "He's such a Nathaniel P." is becoming a descriptor among dating women, and it's because so many of us know him. Mine wasn't a writer (well, at one point he was working on a screenplay, but who wasn't?) but he had all the same moves.The best part of this novel is that in the beginning I really had no idea why Nate was supposed to be such a bad guy. He seems nice enough. Intelligent, if a little too sure of himself. He wasn't always that way, in high school and college he'd felt very insecure socially and had worked to overcome it. Somehow over the course of the book Waldman keeps dropping the seeds here and there until there he is one huge rioting garden of bullsh*t. Which is of course why so many of us date a guy like Nate over the course of our lives: we try to work through it until the stink is about to make us pass out.I especially loved how Nate disparaged my alma mater in a throwaway comment, lumping Gallatin in with Sarah Lawrence and Vassar as where people "gleaned amazingly little knowledge in four years" at "whatever fancy progressive school they'd attended, where that much-heralded goal of modern pedagogy, to teach students 'how to think,' was considered better achieved without the inference of actual facts." Way to put a dagger in me, Nate! What would you think of my CUNY masters degree? (I think we all know. Also, at least my Nate also attended NYU, even though he may or may not have actually earned a degree...)Loved this book, even though some of the characters were pretty obnoxious (in addition, of course, to Nate.) Actually, Hannah seemed way too cool to be so caught up in the Brooklyn hipster/intellectual racket. Aurit in particular struck me as someone I definitely could have met and been frenemies with. I am especially glad that upon finishing the book I looked back with a little bit of nostalgia but absolutely no desire to return, either to Brooklyn or my time as a single woman there. Fantastic!

I think that the author did a marvelous job of looking into common tropes or 'types' of people analytically, but with heart through the eyes of a flawed hero. It was seriously honest and though I am nothing like the protagonist, I was able to identify with him and his thoughts.

Was it wrong of me to expect one hell of a novel behind that lovely jacket? The answer, it turns out, is yes! When they say one should not judge a book by its cover, it is not for nothing. Lesson learnt!The protagonist of Adelle Waldman debut; Nathaniel Piven, “Nate” is a 30 something writer who has almost made his name in the literary world by selling his book for a considerable sum of money. The way Adelle Waldman puts it, Nate is a “product of a postfeminist, 1980s childhood and politically correct, 1990s college education.” So it is natural women would dig this tall, good looking guy, at least until they realize what an “asshole” he is!The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. focuses mainly on one of Nate’s relationships, although we get a glimpse of his past relationships and the girl who comes after the ‘main plot’ briefly. We discover the real Nate, both shallow and obnoxious, waiting to spring to life as we read the novel. And when he does, to my utmost annoyance, most of the women around him reduce into tears and stop being themselves! Not that many of the women he dated are the kind who would leave an impression, after all Adelle’s portraits of them made me feel like these women haven’t had an original thought in a long time.?The dust jacket of the book is full of praise for The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. Adelle Waldman is apparently “deliciously funny and very witty” and I somehow missed all that! Maybe if she had included more dialogues I would have agreed with them, but for me, this book is just way too bland.And I feel like I spent too much time reading about some callow man who refuses change his ways, without a single takeaway! Sigh!

This was an interesting look into the male psyche, at least from the author's perspective. It was a bit anticlimactic. Any part of the book could have been the beginning, middle or end. That being said, it was entertaining and insightful, and the vocabulary was fantastic.